Chandu Bhave: The return of the reluctant bureaucrat

MUMBAI: On February 11, Chandu Bhave received a surprise call from one of the senior-most members of the government. There were barely 48 hours to go before the government made up its mind on who would be appointed for one of the biggest jobs in the financial sector. Evidently, the government was in a bit of a quandary.

Earlier that same day, the top brass in the finance ministry had vigorously debated the contents of a confidential file. Inside were a sheaf of papers, which would determine the selection of the next Sebi chief. A search committee constituted by the government had already submitted its recommendations. There were two names that had been shortlisted: UK Sinha, CMD, UTI AMC and Jaimini Bhagwati, additional secretary in the Foreign Office. But Mr Bhave, chairman and managing director, National Securities Depositories (NSDL), was missing from that shortlist.

In its note to the finance ministry, the search committee had recorded Mr Bhave���s reluctance to be considered for the job because of a long-standing dispute between NSDL and Sebi over an order passed against the depository by the regulator shortly after the IPO price manipulation in 2006.

Mr Bhave had always had the reputation of being an upright bureaucrat. The last thing that he wanted was his appointment to put the government in an embarrassing position, in case the controversial case comes up for hearing during his term. The senior government official mulled over these comments for a few minutes and finally picked up the phone.

When the caller pointedly asked Mr Bhave why he had recused himself from the process of selecting a shortlist, his answer was exactly the same that he had given to the five-member search committee, which had met all the candidates, one by one, at a suite in a leading 5-star hotel in New Delhi. But this time, the caller wasn���t about to give up. ���Leave those issues for the government to handle. We will handle it. We need people like you. If we will offer you a solution to your predicament, would you reconsider your decision?,��� asked the caller. Mr Bhave remained non-committal, till he had figured out what the government had in mind.

Over the next two days, Mr Bhave received a string of phone calls from various senior members of the government to soften him up. The government officials offered him a solution: they would ring-fence him from any future proceedings involving NSDL. The ministry of finance will issue a formal notification to this effect later after his appointment was approved. Being a seasoned bureaucrat himself, Mr Bhave would have known that this was entirely in the government���s powers. But no search committee would have had the mandate to do this. So, by Wednesday morning, he finally relented.

The action then shifted to North Block, which houses the finance ministry, and then across the road in Raisina Hill to South Block, where the Prime Minister���s Office is located. The matter was kept tightly in wraps during this 48-hour phase. No one other than the FM and a handful of senior bureaucrats in the finance ministry were aware of the choice.At 6 pm, the matter was finally resolved after the finance minister met the prime minister for half-an-hour. But before that the highest office in the country had to be first convinced that Mr Bhave was the man for the job. Not just that. Especially, since the search committee had shortlisted two other names. So it took a fair bit of political courage to opt for Mr Bhave.

A person close to the development said that most members in the committee were impressed by Mr Bhave���s approach. All candidates were asked to spell out their vision for Sebi and how they intended to achieve it. Informally, most members felt that Mr Bhave was among the best. Besides, he had earned his spurs as executive director at Sebi during its formative years and then building NSDL into an institution with strong foundations through the late nineties.

Not too many people remember that in 1992, when the second chairman of Sebi GV Ramakrishna had invited him to Sebi in its core team, Mr Bhave had reservations about joining. The financial sector was in its infancy then, and Bhave felt uncertain about giving up his seemingly cushy job at Mantralaya - the power centre in Maharashtra. Mr Ramakrishna, who was his boss at the petroleum ministry, was sharp: ���Would I offer you a job that would harm you?��� Mr Bhave did take up the assignment - and went on to serve with distinction for five years.

The stint would have certainly given him a glimpse into the pulls and pressures of the Sebi chief���s position. Above all, at the best of times, it is a bed of horns. It needs a strong-willed individual with tremendous maturity and capacity for independent thinking. It isn���t easy to find all this in one person. But Chandrashekhar Bhaskar Bhave, say colleagues from the financial circles in Mumbai, is an exception.